Cantab Feature for Wednesday, January 10, 2018: Jelal Huyler and the Champion of Champions Slam with RebeccaLynn

Jelal Huyler, writer and talker. Photo courtesy Huyler family archive.

Jelal Huyler, writer and talker. Photo courtesy Huyler family archive.

Jelal Huyler is an Oakland-born, Massachusetts-residing poet/emcee who does not believe in linear time. He spends most of this not-believed-in concept scribbling into notebooks, and writing things and talking extensively on various subjects. He has slammed nationally for Stockton, California and Northampton, Massachusetts, and he coached the 2017 Northampton National Poetry Slam Team. He is mostly concerned with burritos… which do not exist in Massachusetts. This bio has now made Jelal sad.

Jelal’s voice and work have been featured in several documentaries, including Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequality, which explores race and restorative justice in the United States. Previous and forthcoming publications include Eleven Eleven, 3Elements Review, 580 Split, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and SlamChop. His book Fractals is available on The Gorilla Press. Jelal also makes good blue soul music. Ask him about stuff.

Tonight also marks the final night in our current 8×8 poetry slam series! Following Jelal’s feature, eight slam winners will slam off for the season championship and the opportunity to challenge RebeccaLynn, the current reigning Champion of Champions, in a head-to-head event including a New Poem Round.

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge. Doors for the show open at 7:15. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the feature performs at approximately 10:00. The Champion of Champions poetry slam will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Happy new calendar year, Cantabbers! Thanks so much to each and every one of you who came out to celebrate the first Wednesday of 2017 with local 2017 National Poetry Slam finalist Angelica Maria. Angelica performed beautifully, bantered sweetly, and shook our emotions fiercely and unrelentingly; what a way to dust out our hearts for the year to come.

The slam was a super-fun time, with a mix of seven newcomers and veterans looking for a chance to get heard, qualify for the team, and/or walk out ten dollars richer! John Pinkham and Neiel Israel faced off in the final, with neither poet holding anything back: at the end of the night, Neiel stood supreme among the smoking ruins of the judges’ whiteboards. Both finalists are now qualified for the Team Selection Slams on January 24 and January 31.

Next week: 2018 is not fooling around, folks! Temps will return to double digits and we’ll have a doubly exciting show for you: a feature from Jelal Huyler and a chance to see RebeccaLynn defend her title in the Champion of Champions Slam. See you there!

Tips from the Bar: Absent Adam Part One

Bartender Adam Stone may be on vacation, but he’s still working on prompts so you can work on poems:

Use a scientific fact that can be broadly explained in one sentences as the basis for a three minute folktale.

Cantab Feature for January 3, 2018: Angelica Maria

Angelica Maria, 2017 National Poetry Slam Finalist. Photo courtesy marlono.com.

Angelica Maria, 2017 National Poetry Slam Finalist. Photo courtesy marlono.com.

Angelica Maria is a poet and designer from Los Angeles, California. She was a finalist at the 2017 National Poetry Slam in Denver, Colorado, with Boston’s House Slam team. Angelica currently has a chapbook, Dolorosa, available on pizza pi press, on the nuances of female identity and second generation latinx feelings. She will be reciting a Ted Talk on the topic of self-love for Tedx Vail in February of 2018. Catch her on Instagram (angelicamalamaria) or Twitter (@malamamamaria).

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge. Doors for the show open at 7:15. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the feature performs at approximately 10:00. An open poetry slam in the 8×8 series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Happy Old Year, Cantabbers! How pleasing to have enjoyed our last Wednesday of 2017 with seven-year-irregular Emily Duggan on the stage. Emily brought her poetry, theater, and ghostly skills to the show, taking us on a grand journey through the personal and the historical, all wrapped up in a delightful bundle of banter. We hope to see Emily again, no matter how irregularly, when she returns from her MFA program in Chicago.

The slam was a feisty foursome of– dare we say it– late-season rookies to the Cantab, all bringing fresh work and game skilled enough to distress the onlookers already qualified for team slams. The final round came down to Vicky Munyoz vs. José, whose work had dialogued beautifully with one another from jump. Of course, there’s only one ten-dollar bill for the winner, so someone had to take the fall… Vicky was graceful in an overtime defeat, as was our latest winner in a first slam triumph: congratulations to José, the antepenultimate qualifier for the 2018 Team Selection Slams.

Next week: let’s ring in 2018 for real, folks! Our feature will be Angelica Maria, 2017 National Poetry Slam Finalist and bombdiggity local from across the river. If you are sharpening your slam fangs (hey now), keep in mind that the slam that night will be the last in the current 8×8 series.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, December 27, 2017: Emily Duggan

The Boston Poetry Slam is pleased to present a reschedule of our promised feature for August 16, 2017.

Poet and Ghost Host (really) Emily Duggan. Photo by Jason Kasman.

Poet and Ghost Host (really) Emily Duggan. Photo by Jason Kasman.


Emily Duggan has studied writing, performance poetry, straight and applied theatre, and improv, sketch, and stand-up comedy at Brandeis University, Emerson College, GrubStreet, The Second City— Chicago, and more. In the past three years, she has worked as a/an: traveling-children’s-theatre intern, K-12 tutor, improvisational illustrator, escape-room facilitator, puppet-theatre administrator, historic educator, psychologist’s assistant, documentary-theatre actor, dramaturg, and ghost (seriously) (dead seriously) (sorry not sorry) (actually sorry). In the summer of 2016, she may have been the first woman to print Paul Revere’s [in]famous engraving of the Boston Massacre in over 200 years — and on the same device he’d’ve used. After all that excitement and too much more, Emily fled Boston in August 2017, and she is currently a candidate for an MFA in Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge. Doors for the show open at 7:15. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the feature performs at approximately 10:00. An open poetry slam in the 8×8 series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Happy solstice time, Cantabbers; we were so pleased to celebrate one of the longest nights of the year with one of the premier curators in New England, Northampton poet Catherine Weiss. This editor-in-chief and slam founder showed off her slam cred both on and off the page, bringing her beautifully illustrated work to the merch table as well. Catherine’s stellar feature also set up a great open poetry slam, featuring Manchester 2017 IWPS rep Sara Mae vs. Boston Poetry Slam 2008 NPS rep Harlym125 in the final round; in a battle for the generations, Sara Mae took the win and the big $10 home in time for some holidays.

Next Wednesday: our last show of the calendar year will feature a much-missed sometime-regular home from her MFA program in Chicago… Emily Duggan, MFA candidate, dramaturg, and storyteller-poet. The open slam that night will be one of the last remaining to qualify to try out for the 2018 Boston Poetry Slam Team. See you there!

Tips from the Bar: Best Served Cold in a Tiny Dish

Writing prompt from Adam Stone for December 20, 2017.

Writing prompt from Adam Stone for December 20, 2017.

The petty revenge prompt: write a very specific non-violent revenge fantasy that you are unlikely to actually follow through on.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, December 20, 2017: Catherine Weiss

Northampton Grand Slam Champ and Pulp Slam curator Catherine Weiss. Photo by Nikolas Letendre-Cahillane.

Northampton Grand Slam Champ and Pulp Slam curator Catherine Weiss. Photo by Nikolas Letendre-Cahillane.

Catherine Weiss loves poems. And friendship. And crying. Sometimes she loves them all at once. Catherine is known for her mix of tenderness and humor, and definitely not for punching through walls like the Hulk when she doesn’t win a slam. Her poetry has been published in Freezeray Poetry, Voicemail Poems, Gravel Mag, Jersey Devil Press, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and elsewhere. She was the 2017 Grand Slam Champion of Northampton Poetry and is the editor-in-chief of SlamChop. In August 2017, she founded the poetry show Pulp Slam in Easthampton, Mass. More about Catherine can be found at http://catherineweiss.com.

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge. Doors for the show open at 7:15. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the feature performs at approximately 10:00. An open poetry slam in the 8×8 series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, December 13, 2017

It just wouldn’t be right to call Austin Hendricks‘ feature at the Cantab this past Wednesday “spider-infested;” after all, we invited the spiders over, enjoyed their company greatly, and, ultimately, were saddened to see their part in the feature end… So let’s call Austin’s carefully crafted, gently personal set something more like “spider-bedazzled” or “spiderfull” and hope that, if you missed it, you can get just an inkling of how safe, seen, and utterly charmed a well-placed spider poem can make you feel.

After Austin’s set, a mean foursome slammed off for a surprisingly crisp ten dollar prize; returning slammer Max May took the long road (via one tough tie) to the last round, only to be eliminated by an iceberg-staunch Cassandra de Alba at the final bell. Cassandra joins our crew of qualified slammers for the 2018 slam team; only three more chances remain!

Our next show on Wednesday, December 20, will feature Catherine Weiss, founder of Easthampton’s Pulp Slam and a proud Slytherin. And, yes, we’ll close the night with one of the final 8×8 slams of the season.